Gaia was excited to get up early this morning in order to attend UKIP’s briefing on their policies for the countryside – “Protecting Our Green and Pleasant Land“. It was disappointing that so few others in the press felt the same way, by Gaia’s count there were 5 other journalists. The UKIP comms operation outnumbered journos two to one…

Heavy hitters Patrick O’Flynn and Suzanne Evans started off by reassuring everybody that they like the countryside a lot and are nothing like the other parties who hate the countryside. Labour hate it and the Tories really hate it.

They hate it so much that they’re going to build lots of houses all over it. UKIP won’t let that happen, they will build lots of houses on brownfield land and stop foreign nationals from getting social housing. Also they will stop uncontrolled immigration.

How many brownfield sites are there? UKIP aren’t really sure but they would build a million houses on them in the next decade. How many non-British nationals are living in social housing? UKIP aren’t really sure but aren’t there a lot of rich foreigners buying up expensive housing in London.

Despite Gobby’s pleading, the journos had run out of questions. Gaia shuffled out into the sunlight for a fag and a croissant…